The Doctor's Wife: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

Mrs. Gilbert got up by-and-by, when the western sky was all one lurid glow of light and colour. She got up because there was little peace for a weary spirit in that chamber; to the door of which some considerate creature came every half-hour or so to ask Isabel if her head was any better by this time, if she would have a cup of tea, if she would come down-stairs and lie on the sofa, and to torment her with many other thoughtful inquiries of the like nature. She was not to be alone with her great sorrow. Sooner or later she must go out and begin life again, and face the blank world in which he was not. Better, since it must be so, that she should begin her dreary task at once. She bathed her face and head, she plaited her long black hair before the little glass, behind which the lurid sky glared redly at her. Ah, how often in the sunny morning she had stood before that shabby old-fashioned glass thinking of him, and the chance of meeting him beside the mill-stream, under the flickering shadows of the oak-leaves at Thurston's Crag! And now it was all over, and she would never, never, never, never see him again! Her life was finished. Ah, how truly he had spoken on the battlements of the ruined tower! and how bitterly the meaning of his words came home to her to-day! Her life was finished. The curtain had fallen, and the lights were out; and she had nothing more to do but to grope blindly about upon a darkened stage until she sank in the great vampire-trap—the grave. A pale ghost, with sombre shadowy hair, looked back at her from the glass. Oh, if she could die, if she could die! She thought of the mill-stream. The wheel would be idle; and the water low down in the hollow beyond the miller's cottage would be still to-night, still and placid and glassy, shining rosy red in the sunset like the pavement of a cathedral stained with the glory of a painted window. Why should she not end her sorrows for ever in the glassy pool, so deep, so tranquil? She thought of Ophelia, and the miller's daughter on the banks of Allan Water. Would she be found floating on the stream, with weeds of water-lilies tangled in her long dark hair? Would she look pretty when she was dead? Would he be sorry when he heard of her death? Would he read a paragraph in the newspapers some morning at breakfast, and break a blood-vessel into his coffee-cup? Or would he read and not care? Why should he care? If he had cared for her, he could never have gone away, he could never have written that cruel formal letter, with not a word of regret—no, not one. Vague thoughts like these followed one another in her mind. If she could have the courage to go down to the water's brink, and to drop quietly into the stream where Roland Lansdell had once told her it was deepest.

She went down-stairs by-and-by, in the dusk, with her face as white as the tumbled muslin that hung about her in limp and flabby folds. She went down into the little parlour, where George and Sigismund were waiting for their tea, and where two yellow mould-candles were flaring in the faint evening breeze. She told them that her head was better; and then began to make the tea, scooping up vague quantities of congou and gunpowder with the little silver scollop-shell, which had belonged to Mr. Gilbert's grandmother, and was stamped with a puffy profile of George the Third.

"But you've been crying, Izzie!" George exclaimed presently, for Mrs. Gilbert's eyelids looked red and swollen in the light of the candles.

"Yes, my head was so bad it made me cry; but please don't ask me any more about it," Isabel pleaded, piteously. "I suppose it was the p-pic-nic"—she nearly broke down upon the word, remembering how good he had been to her all through the happy day—"yesterday that made me ill."

"I dare say it was that lobster-salad," Mr. Gilbert answered, briskly: "I ought to have told you not to eat it. I don't think there's anything more bilious than lobster-salad dressed with cream."

Sigismund Smith watched his hostess with a grave countenance, while she poured out the tea and handed the cups right and left. Poor Isabel managed it all with tolerable steadiness; and then, when the miserable task was over, she sat by the window alone, staring blankly out at the dusty shrubs distinct in the moonlight, while her husband and his friend smoked their cigars in the lane outside.

How was she to bear her life in that dull dusty lane—her odious life, which would go on and on for ever, like a slow barge crawling across dreary flats upon the black tideless waters of a canal? How was she to endure it? All its monotony, all its misery, its shabby dreariness, its dreary shabbiness, rose up before her with redoubled force; and the terror of that hideous existence smote her like a stroke from a giant's hand.

It all came back. Yes, it came back. For the last two months it had ceased to be; it had been blotted out—hidden, forgotten; there had been no such thing. An enchanter's wand had been waved above that dreary square-built house in the dusty lane, and a fairy palace had arisen for her habitation; a fairy-land of beauty and splendour had spread itself around her, a paradise in which she wandered hand in hand with a demigod. The image of Roland Lansdell had filled her life, to the exclusion of every other shape, animate or inanimate. But the fairy-land melted away all at once, like a mirage in the desert; like the last scene in a pantomime, the rosy and cerulean lights went out in foul sulphurous vapours. The mystic domes and minarets melted into thin air; but the barren sands remained real and dreary, stretching away for ever and for ever before the wanderer's weary feet.

In all Mrs. Gilbert's thoughts there was no special horror or aversion of her husband. He was only a part of the dulness of her life; he was only one dreary element of that dreary world in which Roland Lansdell was not. He was very good to her, and she was vaguely sensible of his goodness, and thankful to him. But his image had no abiding place in her thoughts. At stated times he came home and ate his dinner, or drank his tea, with substantial accompaniment of bread and butter and crisp garden-stuff; but, during the last two months, there had been many times when his wife was scarcely conscious of his presence. She was happy in fairy-land, with the prince of her perpetual fairy tale, while poor George Gilbert munched bread and butter and crunched overgrown radishes. But the fairy tale was finished now, with an abrupt and cruel climax; the prince had vanished; the dream was over. Sitting by that open window, with her folded arms resting on the dusty sill, Mrs. Gilbert wondered how she was to endure her life.

And then her thoughts went back to the still pool below the mill-stream. She remembered the happy, drowsy summer afternoon on which Roland Lansdell had stood by her side and told her the depth of the stream. She closed her eyes, and her head sank forward upon her folded arms, and all the picture came back to her. She heard the shivering of the rushes, the bubbling splash of a gudgeon leaping out of the water: she saw the yellow sunlight on the leaves, the beautiful sunlight creeping in through every break in the dense foliage; and she saw his face turned towards her with that luminous look, that bright and tender smile, which had only seemed another kind of sunshine.